Plague Of The Revenants (23 page)

The soldier had been bitten, for I had not killed him cleanly with the Gatling gun. I reckoned by the size of the bite there were about five minutes until he turned. I dragged him up and into the vehicle, propped him into the driver’s seat and drove off.
I waited several minutes, watching the soldier intently. In time I saw his fingers stir and his head slowly rise. He turned towards me and opened his demonic eyes. His jaws and entire body stretched out. His foot went down upon the accelerator. The truck slowly started to love forwards. In time it gathered speed and careered into the fence with a mighty crash, tearing the metal work from the frames with a noise that I was satisfied must have woken up the entire camp with it.
The guards within the perimeter saw the truck at once and now opened fire upon it, not knowing they were just wasting their bullets. I made my way back to the jeep, jumped inside and drove through the hole in the fence, pulled up at a reasonable distance and returned to the gun at the back. The lorry had smashed against an outbuilding and now the revenants poured out to attack. Guards were running all over the place. I started up the Gatling gun and started contributing my own brand of chaos, offering them no mercy and enjoying the sight of the bullets ripping right through the so called Elite troops.
For the time being the revenants contented themselves with feasting on the stricken Elite but I knew this could not last forever. I leapt from the truck and charged towards the slave quarters as the screams of the guards echoed all around. The other survivors were there. Dev and Hammond came forward to greet me. Of Kit, however, there was no sign.
“The church and farmhouse is overrun,” I said, and then turning to Dev. “Take everyone back to that row of council houses e looted with Stan the other week. At least we know the place is clear even though it’s bound to be a tight fit.”
“What about defending ourselves?” Asked Hammond
“Here,” I said to Dev, thrusting the gun into his hands. “Take this in case you run into any trouble.” I turned to Hammond. “Are you okay to drive?”
“No problem,” replied Hammond with a relieved smile.
I turned to see more and more revenants, for so long pinned back, no swarming into the camp. “Quick!” I said urgently. “Grab what you can and get out of here.” I thrust my gun into Dev’s hands. “Here,” I said. “keep them at bay whilst the others raid supplies. We’re going to need them if we’re going to take all these people back.”
“They came so quickly,” said Thorpe. “We had no chance to resist, there were so many of them. If we hadn’t surrendered we would never have…”
“You did the right thing,” I said quickly, anxious not to be drawn into a long discussion when there was still work to be done.
The other survivors came from all walks of life and as with our own group ranged from the very young to the very old. I was determined we would accommodate them all somehow as I followed them outside.
“You mean to say you did all this yourself?” Asked Thorpe, stepping out and regarding the chaos in wonderment.
“And a few uneasy allies,” I replied, nodding in the direction of the revenants. “And for that very reason we need to cut this short.”
“What about you?” Asked Hammond
“I’ll join you in a little bit,” I told him. “I have some unfinished business to attend to first.”
“You’re pushing your luck, you know that, Grant?” Called Hammond after me, but he was only half serious.

I grabbed up a machine gun from one of the dead guards and moved forwards quickly, firing with pinpoint accuracy, cutting down both revenant and soldier who crossed my path. I headed into the grandstand area and through the narrow corridor, a prisoner no more. There was only one man I was looking for. I turned and charged into the restaurant area, now a mess hall for the troops. He was there, of course he was. Our destinies were always bound to cross. I knew straight away that this was the endgame. Only one of us was going to be leaving this room alive.  “Do you not regret anything?” I demanded as I smashed the axe through the head of a revenant. “Have you no shame for what you are doing?”
“Shame?” Laughed Blake contemptuously. “But we dear Grant we are both of us psychopaths. The only difference is I know how to control my urges and better channel them to my own advantage. But I do have one big regret as it happens, Grant. I regret not taking you with me that day I took off from the football stadium. Why alone I was formidable but the two of us together could be unstoppable! What do you say, Grant? It is too late for this shithole of course but they’ll be other survivors out there needing guidance and leadership. Just think about it, Grant, we could remake the entire world in our own image. We could be as chieftains running our own empire!”
I laughed bitterly. “You must be out of your fucking mind,” I told him contemptuously.
“What a strange time you picked to grow a heart,” laughed Blake mockingly. “You mean to tell me you actually care for those losers? I tell you they’ve been holding you back, man. You should have come with me. You can still learn.”
“I shall stop you,” I retorted.
“You think this will stop me?”  Blake laughed contemptuously. “Men like me cannot be stopped, Grant, not in this world.”
The revenants stumbled through the wreckage towards us but I was only half paying them attention as I circled Blake. When a revenant got in my way I dealt with it quickly and cleanly. I was, after all, an instinctive killer.
“It is appropriate, do you not think, that in the end it should come down to just you and I?” Sneered Blake. “I could do with a worthy opponent to test my mettle.”
“You will find that in me,” I vowed.
“We were born for this world you and I,” said Blake. “We were born to kill, you and I, born to take charge in a crisis; natural leaders, natural killers.”
“You kept those people as slaves,” I retorted angrily.
“Those people were better off as slaves,” spat Blake. “It was not as if we kept them in chains but rather we protected them from the revenants. We did not keep them in chains, did not even lock their doors at night. They were free to leave at any time.”
“Free to leave and walk straight into the arms of the revenants,” I retorted angrily.
“But of course,” purred Blake. “You join our club, you play by our rules so to speak.”
“This is all nonsense,” I spat. “You don’t care about grand ideas or saving the world, you’re just in it for yourself, for your own power.”
“Well of course,” replied Blake. “But then again so are all the survivors. You try to work as a team and you’ll soon end up either dead, a revenant or a slave as your motley little group of misfits have discovered.”
I smashed the axe through the air, decapitating the revenant in a single blow. At that moment Blake turned and threw the cleaver at me. I ducked, but not in time. The blade sliced the side of my cheek and sent me tumbling back on to the floor. Blake now seized hold of his golf club and advanced upon me. I looked up. The severed head of the revenant had rolled under the table and now stared at me with bulging eyes, its teeth snapping furiously.  I reached out my hands in a gesture of surrender. Blake threw back his head and laughed. “A bit late for pleading now, don’t you think, Grant?” He sneered. “Then again scum like you always try every trick in the book.” I reached under the table and seized hold of the revenant’s head by the hair then brought it forward quickly and threw it into Blake’s face. The snapping teeth latched on to his cheek straight away. Blake threw back his arms, dropping the golf club as he did so and staggered away as a jet of blood shot from the side of his face. I leapt to my feet and prepared to set off in pursuit but at that moment the double doors to the mess room crashed open and a whole horde of revenants poured in. I turned back towards Blake. He was backed against the corner now and although he had managed to rip the revenant’s head away from him he was now left with a hideous gash that had torn away half his face all the way to the skull. Leastways he was no danger to me anymore. I decided to let him turn, for it was surely the least he deserved. Right now I had more pressing matters to be attending to.

I seized up box after box, charging back and forth, dodging revenants as I went, determined to gather up as much as I could so that we would never be threatened again. Of Blake’s body there was no sign. Had he been devoured by the revenants already? We would come back later. There were revenants here but not too many. Come back another day with the Gatling gun and we could clean up. We were set for a long time now. If only I could find Kit.

I got into the truck and drove off. A noise sounded on the top of the cab and I looked into the hellish, vengeful eyes of the newly revenant Blake. The revenant’s arms went straight to my throat and I found myself wondering in that instance whether the undead really did lose all memory, for the hatred in the revenant Blake’s eyes were as nothing I had ever seen before. Blake was dead and turned, of this there could be no doubt.  What was left of his face now leered at me obscenely but all the same I was certain some dark corner of his brain knew who I was and as I vainly grappled with him in the smashed up truck by the side of the road I became convinced that same part of him regarded his death as some fiendish new opportunity. He was positively relishing his new powers. I felt his teeth upon my neck, starting to squeeze my flesh. So we were to die together, I thought to myself. At least I had taken him with me, although this was hardly a great deal of consolation. An explosion of blood suddenly hit me, full in the face. I assumed it was my own but then I realised there was pieces of brain and bone mixed in with the gore. Also, Blake had gone limp in my grip. I pushed hard. The warden’s headless body rolled off me. I got up gingerly, not even noticing the effluence all over my clothes. It was then I saw Kit, shotgun in her hands. I reached my hand to my neck and was amazed to realise my flesh was untorn.
“A fine time you picked to show up,” I muttered casually, trying to disguise how relieved I was to see her.
“Just a shame I almost missed the party,” sighed Kit.
“They’ll be others,” I laughed.
“What
about the others?” Demanded Kit.
“Unharmed along with all the slaves,” I told her. “All the slaves freed and all the guys either dead, turned or at best running for their very lives from all the pitfalls the post-apocalyptic countryside has to offer, and good riddance to them.”
“Do you think we’re in the clear?” Asked Kit.
“Not by a long shot,” I laughed. “But we’ve given ourselves a chance and survived another day, and in this new world that really is all you can hope to do. We’ve got quite a mix of survivors to pick through and with the amount of salvageable weapons around here we could build ourselves quite an army.”
“What about supplies?” Asked Kit. “Where are we going to put so many people.”
“Problems for another day,” I said softly, looking back towards the burning racecourse and all the chaos I had created.
“Have we done the wrong thing?” Asked Kit. “We’ve hardly got a palace to offer them, just a site overrun with revenants, a few potatoes and rabbits.”
“Better than being slaves,” I replied. “And we can rebuild. We’ve got the vans and the equipment right here. All being well we should be able to mine this place for a good few months before it runs dry. The only question is where do we go from here?”
Kit smiled. “What do you say you and I go and take back that church from the revenants?”
“What?” I asked. “All by ourselves?”
“Of course,” said Kit, revving the engine of the motorbike and nodding for me to get on behind her. “God knows we’ve been through worse than this.”